Closer to Stone

by Cleary, Simon

  Some people you understand by stripping layers away, peeling off their false skins. With others it’s like working with papier-mache – the layers need to be added. Sophe was like that. There was that moment of beatific serenity at the desk when I’d first glimpsed her. That image would almost have been enough. But now she began to take shape.

  Sophe was an only child. She had grown up in the midwest, and then left for New York on a scholarship to Columbia, the university named after the explorer who proved the world wasn’t flat –

  ‘For a girl from the flat midwest plains,’ Sophe joked, ‘New York was the world.’

  When she got there everything expanded further, kept expanding, the distance from her hometown growing greater by the day . . . yet somehow dissolving at the same time. That’s what she said, though I didn’t understand it. She decided to study the most foreign of languages on offer. Not exotic, but foreign. At the outer limits, it was Arabic she found.

  There was a pamphlet on a student noticeboard calling for volunteers to work in the camps one summer break and she and a girlfriend responded. Afterwards, when her friend returned to study, Sophe stayed.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I wanted to help.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to help. You can do that here. Among the dispossessed.’

  ‘Dispossessed?’

  ‘The poor.’

  The child in the photo on our fridge at home had come from Africa too, the little black girl we were sponsoring out of poverty. Our mother had started this, and Em continued it despite our resistance. The little girl who joined us at the dinner table each evening at grace.

  ‘Like Mother Teresa?’

  She smiled but I wouldn’t let it go. If we’d been girls our mother would have wanted Jack and me to take the name of the little Albanian nun from the Calcutta slums at our confirmation.

  ‘But you admire her?’

  Sophe touched her scarf.

  ‘Don’t for a moment think this is a nun’s habit, Bas.’

  She laughed that unselfconscious laugh of hers. How much she bared of herself. Then her voice dropped and became serious again.

  ‘We’ve played a role in this, Bas. Our governments. We either had colonial obligations – and not that long ago – or we now have trade ambitions. Often both. So we support independence movements against corrupt old regimes. Or the regimes against the forces of anarchy. We’re playing here, Bas. We’re responsible.’

  ‘It’s atonement then, is it?’

  Sophe smiled again, even as I pushed.

  ‘If we didn’t have a hand in all this getting to where it is, we still have a responsibility.’

  ‘Responsibility?’

  ‘To do the right thing. To help each other where we can. Because we can.’

  ‘And to lecture each other?’ I smiled.

  Sophe laughed again.

  ‘I’m sorry. The teacher in me.’

  Later I accused her of disowning her country.

  ‘Whether you like it or not, it’s still your inheritance.’

  Her grand response – she said she was a child of all humanity. That nationality is as unimportant as whether one wears one’s hair in a ponytail or a bun.

  ‘Or hides it behind a veil?’ I challenged, trying to get behind her.

  ‘Yes,’ she cheerfully agreed, her philosophy large enough for that too.

  If I’d known then what I do now I wouldn’t have allowed her that easy acceptance, would have fought her.

  *

  As I waited in the shade of the school building for her one afternoon, I lifted a piece of concrete, which had been lying nearby, onto my thigh. A nail lay discarded on the ground between my legs and I picked it up too. For the first time in weeks I cut a groove into the block, the concrete dust falling onto my jeans. How good it felt. I worked the block as it rested on my leg, changing its shape under the lowering sun, under the eyes of the intrigued school children who stopped to watch when Sophe let them out after class. She brought out a chair too.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Is that true? You have no idea?’

  ‘A sense. But you never really know until it’s done.’

  The children were as interested in the words passing between us as in the shaping of the block. Their eyes moved back and forth.

  ‘Why teach?’ I asked Sophe as I worked the concrete.

  ‘Because I’m not a doctor.’

  Sophe winked.

  ‘And the children want to learn,’ she continued, smiling at some girls, including them. The boys had drifted away. ‘Their parents want them to learn.’

  I turned to the children.

  ‘Why . . . do . . . you . . . want . . . to learn . . . English?’

  Sophe translated it and the answers came back through her. Each of the girls had an opinion.

  Because it is the international language.

  To make money for my family.

  For liberation.

  ‘Liberty,’ I corrected the girl.

  She shook her head fiercely, her face harder than the others, leaner, eyes unafraid. ‘Liberation.’

  ‘Yes,’ another girl agreed. ‘To go to America and tell them about us.’

  By then the small block in my lap had become a lizard, head raised and angled to the left, alert, like the one I’d left uncompleted back at The Springs. It wasn’t detailed – concrete doesn’t allow that, the way it turns to dust – but it held together enough so you could tell it was a bearded dragon. I stood it on my palm, turning and examining it before offering it to the children.

  ‘Un cadeau,’ I said, before releasing it to the quickest of the little desert hands.

  FOUR

  We were sitting on the floor of Sophe’s tent when a woman entered. She handed Sophe an envelope, unstamped, a letter that had passed through no postal system to get here. I watched as Sophe read her name, and saw the letter grow heavy in her hands. She looked up at me and we shared a moment of uncertainty. I was grateful. Am still. She looked down and then, with a care that seemed almost timid, nicked the seal of the envelope with her thumbnail.

  I moved away and sat against a wall of the tent, giving her space. And yet, already I was fearful of looking away.

  The wind blew beyond the canvas and Sophe read. Tent ropes vibrated in the wind, a hum coming off them. She read. There were children laughing outside, yet she was oblivious. Trucks unloaded sacks of wheat in the dusty public square, and I listened, and watched her read.

  I tried to interpret her face.

  When she finished she looked up from the gap in time she’d passed through. Even now I can’t properly describe the way she appeared. I’d never seen a woman cry like that, silently. Her bowed head, her hands and the letter in her lap, her tears falling, all her grace. I’ve dreamt of her like that a thousand times since, almost destroyed myself wanting to capture it, that moment. Then, when she’d stopped crying and there were tracks on her cheeks where her tears had coursed over the fine sand that covered her face, she held it out to me. The letter from my lost brother.

  Cross-legged on the floor, I took my turn at what neither of us had imagined. A strange, new, Jack.

  Dear Sophia,

  Forgive me. I couldn’t think how to tell you so I didn’t. I couldn’t bear your disappointment. I’m not sure I can explain it even now, but I will try and I hope you might understand.

  I want to live differently. I need to live differently. I believe I’ve been called to live differently. I’ve come to realise that until now my life has been without meaning. I’ve been too much of the world, too concerned with myself and all the million little things that cannot last, and not concerned enough about what
is eternal. How the desert has humbled me!

  I feel now, Sophia, that everything untrue is being stripped away. It will take time. Leaving the army was not the end. And even before that, leaving my family and leaving Australia were part of that same journey. I understand that now. I didn’t when I first arrived – I thought staying with you in the camps, and serving your beautiful children might be it. How I wanted to stay with you! How much I wanted that, Sophia – to work beside you. But that was your vocation, not mine (and what you do is extraordinary). It fulfils you, I know that. But it was not enough for me, not my way. There is even more stripping away to do.

  Now I understand that it’s not me, or my family, or the army, or even the children in the camp I must serve. It is God, Sophia. I need to serve God. To be with Him and to offer myself absolutely to Him. To trust Him. Please don’t think me mad. I know it is unusual, especially these days, but men and women have dedicated themselves to God for centuries, living lives of prayer and contemplation. How inspiring it was to observe the Muslims and their daily devotion. Their dedication to God. Their simple commitment. For a heart like mine, which is only now beginning to open itself to Him, it is inspiring.

  And so, I’ve joined a monastery. Perhaps you will laugh, but I don’t think so. It is tiny but it is perfect. There are just two of us here and it is exactly what my poor heart needs. I read the Bible and I pray all day. And I am getting better at offering myself to God and placing myself in His care and trusting Him. Getting better every day. I am learning to sacrifice, and to suffer and to love. Because God is the source of all beauty and all love, Sophia. I know that now. God is love, Perfect Love. I hope you understand. I pray to God with all my heart that you understand.

  May God be with us always.

  Jack

  FIVE

  Sophe arranged a lift out of camp on an aid truck, the two of us crouched on the empty tray which the day before had arrived packed with sacks of rice. It was midmorning but the sun was already high. There was no shade. She tied a headscarf around me, and we sat on our packs for protection from the heat coming up through the metal tray.

  Why did we go? Jack hadn’t asked for us. Quite the opposite: he wrote as if he was beyond all comings and all goings, all human need. As though he had freed himself from the earth and from Sophe and from me. But neither of us believed it. We each found things in his letter that were, despite his claims, fragile. Things that both of us, for our different reasons, doubted. And we were each separately convinced that Jack needed us to mould him back into his proper shape.

  Sophe guessed where he might be.

  ‘There is a monastery,’ she said, ‘a little stone hermitage in the Ahaggar mountains that was built by a French monk a century ago. He called it “Assekrem”, which in the language of the Tuareg nomads, means “the end of the earth”.’

  Which made sense. Or rather fitted, like all paradoxes: an inflamed manifesto from a soul who’d lost his centre, written from a monastery, in the middle of a desert, at the ends of the earth.

  A cry for help.

  *

  Reaching the Ahaggar meant taking a route that on a map resembled a series of descending steps. East from the camps till we hit the Route du Tanzerouf, then south till we reached the town at the end of the road, then east again across the sands until we joined the Route du Hoggar, and south even deeper, to the old oasis town of Tamanrasset and the monastery in the mountains nearby.

  The first hours were hard, the sun pounding us, the tray scalding to the touch. We shifted position constantly, sitting on our packs, squatting behind the cab, standing when our legs began to cramp before being forced down again by the torrent of scorching air that rushed over the top of the cabin. I sipped water almost continuously, knowing I was taking more than Sophe. She’d acclimatised and her body didn’t need it like mine did. At least that was my feeble justification.

  We stopped late-afternoon at the junction with the route south, a handful of low, sand-encrusted buildings scattered around the intersection. Before the driver cut the engine Sophe slipped a plain gold band onto the ring finger of her left hand, winked, and said to me above the motor:

  ‘We’re married.’

  ‘What?’ I shouted, unsure I’d heard her right.

  ‘If anyone asks,’ she shouted back, so close to my ear I could feel the warmth of her breath, ‘we’re married. Just married. It’ll make it easier.’

  This is it, the drivers said, the Route du Tanzerouf. Are we certain? Sophe nodded, a sureness in her movement as she climbed down which they accepted. They reached up for our packs and lowered them to the ground, an over-helpful gesture, as if, having been unable to persuade us against going, this was one last thing they could do for us, the end of their responsibilities, before they continued on to one of the port cities on the coast.

  There were no hotels, and only a single, squat café. At the front an awning hung slack, with tassels limp in the dry air. Three tables were set under the canopy on either side of the doorway. We bought soft-drinks, two bottles each, gulping them down, sickly orange-flavoured soda water, before asking the café-owner about a room for the night.

  The room was as desolate as the café, two single beds set against opposite walls, and between them a three-legged bedside table with a missing drawer. Attached to the remaining wall, pulling away from it, was a sink. Cracks in the stained ceramic resembled lines on a map. I turned the taps, first the cold, then the hot. Nothing. I filled our water bottles from the communal basin at the end of the corridor and Sophe splashed water over her face, washing the day’s sand and dirt away. I followed. We dried our faces and hands with sarongs we’d brought with us, and hung them on the door knob.

  There was no town to explore, so we returned to the café for a meal. Watching a television in one corner of the room were a dozen men, absorbed in a soccer game, their backs to us. I ordered pommes frites, Sophe soup and bread. We ate without talking, watching the men instead, their exasperation and their jubilation, their slumped shoulders, or their bodies leaping into the air.

  When we’d finished our meals, we went out into the quiet night and stood in the street looking up. The moon was new, sharp and bright. The café bulbs glowed, and the TV-light pulsed through the doorway. Even so, the net of stars in the sky was bright. Not the thick swathe of light laid out across the heavens above The Springs, but some new chart unfolding.

  ‘Do you know your way around up there?’ I asked.

  ‘My Pop used to show me,’ she said. ‘He’d drive us out of town to look for shooting stars when I was a child. It’s not exactly the same sky, but it’s close. You?’

  ‘It’s totally different. A bit . . . unsettling.’

  She looked at me but I kept my eyes on the night.

  ‘The north star?’ I asked.

  Sophe pointed.

  ‘Really? Is that it?’

  ‘Polaris.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’d expected something . . . I don’t know . . . bigger.’

  We made our way back to the room at the rear of the building. It was dark in the lee, beyond the café lights, the heavens, the north star. We’d forgotten our torches, so had to step cautiously, avoiding the holes which potted the ground. Only when we reached the door, and stood side by side before it, did I realise it was time to sleep, and that I would be sharing the room with her. That her body and mine would be sharing the same small space. I swallowed, my hand fumbling with the room key. Hard-beating heart, and short breath. I stepped aside, then followed her in.

  Watched her prepare herself. Take off her shoes and leave them by the door. Watched as she unwrapped her headscarf and shook her hair free. Saw her bend towards her pack on the floor, zip it open, and reach for her nightclothes. Turning away, I could still hear her shuffle out of her jeans behind me. Could hear he
r unbuttoning her shirt, hear its sleeves sliding down her arms, falling on top of her pack. I began untying my bootlaces, fingers thick. She slipped a nightshirt over her head, and the bed creaked as she climbed in.

  ‘Goodnight, Bas.’

  I might have turned but did not.

  ‘Goodnight,’ I said.

  SIX

  We travelled in short trips at first, the distance between towns two or three hundred kilometres at most, the road well-maintained asphalt. Most of the lifts were with local truck drivers, ferrying goods from oasis town to oasis town in their lorries. One or two government drivers gave us lifts they shouldn’t have, risking their licences if they were caught. Or businessmen would silently pick us up, study us out of the corner of their eyes for hours and then equally silently drop us off in the next town, not a word passing between us.

  I didn’t think of Jack much those first few days. Because there was Sophe, and all her beauty. There was also the journey itself to settle into, its practicalities, its rhythms. Finding water, sometimes boiling it, keeping our water-bottles filled. Exchanging American dollars for dinar in the first town we came to, the black-market offering better rates than the banks, and me so, so ignorant, acquiescing, as with all else, to her experience. Stocking up on food, just in case. Biscuits and bread and preserved jam and tubes of condensed milk and pieces of fruit and chewing gum. Buying sunglasses from a truck driver who insisted on American dollars. Bartering in markets and in shops, haggling for respect, as she put it, more than a few saved notes – a responsibility Sophe said we had, to all those who came after us.

  And the routine of finding a bed in the evening. For even among foreigners there is desert lore. Not the wisdom of the stars and the winds. More like the foot knowledge of hobos and gypsies which I’d learn myself afterwards, elsewhere. Most of the information we’ve codified in our guidebooks instead of marking the route itself with symbols: the basic matters of food and clothing and shelter. Knowing how to dig a vehicle out of sand and how many iodine drops to add to water. Managing the heat. Avoiding dogs for fear of rabies. In which towns the locals are notorious for cheating travellers and in which they welcome foreigners into their hammams. Survival tips in a foreign land.